Gathie Falk: Presence and Absence

At the Equinox Gallery until November 30

In 1986, Gathie Falk made a painting titled Soft Couch With Suit. In this large still life, she seems to condense all her strategies for representing the human figure—without actually depicting the figure itself. She does this metaphorically, almost alchemically, by rendering in oil an odd grouping of objects: a large reddish-pink sofa, a small flowering bush, and a man’s grey suit hanging from a thin white line. All these forms speak poignantly of loss, endurance, and renewal, of a dead father, a steadfast mother, and a growing child. They speak, too, of Falk’s gift for using everyday objects such as furniture, plants, and clothing as surrogates for people. The suit, especially, articulates a state of there-and-not-there. It’s a ghostly, paternal presence, an aching absence, an image so reverberant that this scene could be interpreted as an Annunciation.

Clothing is the chief symbol of the human figure in Falk’s exhibition at the Equinox Gallery. Here, she deploys sculpted shirts, shoes, dresses, and ball caps to articulate her theme, “Presence and Absence”. Her clothes are fictions, suggesting the people who might have worn them: the slight curve of a breast, the rounded slant of a shoulder, the nudge of a bent knee. Supplementing the three-dimensional works are acrylic paintings on vellum and watercolours on paper. Much of the exhibition is retrospective, ranging from Falk’s ceramic and mixed-media “Bootcases” of the 1970s to her bronze dresses, upright and reclining, of the early 2000s. What anchors the show, however, and at the same time launches it into an otherworldly realm, is her just-completed sculpture The Problem With Wedding Veils.

This extraordinary and unsettling object, executed in the unlikely medium of papier-mâché, dominates the room. Nearly six feet tall, displayed without the support of a brace or mannequin, Falk’s symbolically charged representation of a wedding veil and train leans into space at a phantasmic angle. Painstakingly pleated, evocatively painted, and surrealistically devoid of a bride, it represents a year of her creative labour. A year’s intense problem-solving, too. Unseen amongst the papier-mâché folds is a steel rod, helping to hold the work upright. Intentionally visible is a pair of large rocks, weighing down the end of the train. These homely brown lumps, almost boulders, express the “problem” in the work’s title: the earthbound burdens of marriage. They also communicate Falk’s wry and idiosyncratic sense of humour.

The small white crown, hovering in space and yet somehow holding up the veil and train, is sharply serrated, suggestive of a set of fierce teeth or a jagged line of broken glass on top of a fortified wall. (No illicit breaching of the barricades here.) The slant of the veil and train is acute, as if both trailing behind the bride and leaning toward the altar. Still, the bride has vanished and her wedding wear is all that remains, encumbered by those dreary brown rocks. It’s an impressive, beautiful, and scary work.

The most eloquent and thoughtful essay about Falk’s metaphoric use of clothing was written by Vancouver Art Gallery senior curator Bruce Grenville. It’s included in the book that accompanied the VAG’s 2000 Gathie Falk retrospective, and is a useful companion to the Equinox Gallery show, especially when you’re looking at such poignant and compelling sculptures as Agnes (Black Patina) and Dress With Boy. Both works have been exhibited before, but it’s a pleasure to revisit them now. A melancholy pleasure.